


Sequence Breaking for Sbummies

by marmaladeSkies (Firebird766)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Jumping on the Sburb Guide Bandwagon, Replay Value AU, Some of this Stuff is Risky
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-06-03
Updated: 2012-06-17
Packaged: 2017-11-06 18:47:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/421982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Firebird766/pseuds/marmaladeSkies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sburb is a hard game, no doubt about that. Don't forget, though, it's a <i>game,</i> and games are meant to be cheated at!</p><p>This guide will provide an in-depth look at some of the ways to sequence break using naught but your wits and glitches.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Introduction and Basics

**Author's Note:**

> Based on [Sburb Glitch FAQ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/340777/chapters/551606) by GodsGiftToGrinds, which is great by the way. Go read it.

**Introduction**

Sburb is a hard game, no doubt about it. It is practically guaranteed that someone won't survive the first session, and it doesn't get easier on those subsequent so much as it gets _rote._ Everything divides into little segments. Get in the game, survive until you reach your first gate, blah blah boring! Sburb is a _game!_ Games shouldn't be boring! So what do you do when you reach your fifth or sixth session and have started being able to predict exactly when something is going to go wrong?

Why, sequence break of course! The basics are easy enough if you've alchemized a jetpack or rocket boots or some other flying contraption. The advanced stuff takes a bit more work, and even the basics can be tricky if you can't manage to make a flying machine or if your Land forbids it (Land of Heights and Gravity, anyone?). There are more than enough tricks to cover for those, however.

Besides, who can resist teasing your fellow players about getting somewhere before they did? I know I can't!

\--------------------

**The Most Basic of Basics**

The most basic way to sequence-break in Sburb is so easy that most people don't even realize it's sequence-breaking. It's as simple as alchemizing a flying machine and going through your portals without building up to them. Yup. That's it. You're supposed to have your server player build aaaaall the way up to them, but you know what?

Screw that.

Endless stairs are not my idea of fun and they shouldn't be yours. There is no reason why you should have to grind endless grist before you can go questing in a friend's land. As such, here are some simple item combinations that should provide you with a basis for a flying machine. Have the person with the highest Transmutancy make them so you have a better chance of getting the right thing.

Toy Spaceship && Radio Parts && Backpack (note: _not_ the radio itself. Just its innards.)  
Remote-Controlled Helicopter  && Backpack  
Remote-Controlled Airplane && Backpack  
Beanie || [Anything that flies]  
Bird (dead or alive) || Backpack

See a theme here? Backpacks are invaluable for making things that can attach to you. If you don't have one, try I dunno one of those fanny packs or a belt or something. Play around a bit.

WARNING! Do not go through the seventh gate with this! You will die! _Permanently,_ since your coplayers will also die if they try to follow you to revive you. No matter what your Consorts may claim, your Denizen is not actually sleeping! The big ugly monster will make an adventurer sandwich out of you, and that will be the end of your Sburb experience.

\--------------------

**Slightly Less Basic**

This one can only be done by the Time player. Sorry, guys. It basically involves making a stable time loop where you bring high-level equipment to beginning players. Useful stuff! Sure, only the Knight will be able to _use_ any of it without excessive grinding, but do you want to spend hours upon hours dungeon-crawling, looking for the ultimate weapons once you're high enough? Hell no!

This is pretty simple to actually do. Here's a step-by-step guide:  
1\. Confirm the time-loop results  
2\. Wait until you have enough levels and grist to make a time-travel device (hint: look for stuff related to music)  
3\. Gather as much high-level or even endgame equipment as you can carry  
4\. Complete the loop

The reason this isn't the ultimate in basics is because there's no way to force it. If you're going to make a stable time loop, you'll see the results before you actually set out to do it. I suppose you could cause a time paradox and doom yourself, but I have yet to meet a Time player willing to do that just for the sake of some high-level items. Don't forget that "doomed" means "the session is going to murder you, probably in a painful and humiliating way." When I was a Rogue of Time, I once saw a doomed timeclone trip and stumble down aaaaaall of the stairs in my house-spire-thingy, eventually hitting the totem lathe at high velocity, turning it on and making it drill a hole in his skull. Even though the stumble had already broken his neck and there was no need for that to happen.

Do you want something like that to happen to you? Didn't think so. Stick with time loops for this.

WARNING: Don't forget to complete the loop! It's one of the most basic things ever and usually the game will make it inevitable that you will do it, but sometimes stuff goes wrong and the eye in the sky or whatever you want to say controls the game will forget to make sure inevitabilities are actually inevitable. If you never complete the loop, say you beat the Black King and try to claim the reward without it, it will lead to something I call a loop snap.

If you're lucky, the session becomes what it would be without your fancy high-end equipment involved. There is _no way to predict what that means._ You could still have beaten the Black King, but be minus a few players because your Knight got stomped early on. You could have all died horribly to him. Someone could have gone PK and killed everyone. The butterfly effect is a bitch and a half in this regard. Oh, and your memories stay intact for this. I know because it's happened to me before. We claimed the reward and then suddenly AUGH WHY IS THE BLACK KING ALIVE AGAIN. Not fun.

If you're unlucky, you all could be retroactively erased from history. I say could because there's no way to tell. Any that might have happened have been erased. They're gone. They never have been. Don't forget that this also messes with sessions you've been in in the past. All of those would change too, and you would never know it.


	2. Glitch Abuse: Clipping Errors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Also called: They're Not Bugs; They're _Features._

**Introduction to Glitches**

Glitches can easily be Sburb's way of saying it hates you. Just look at things such as broken gates and the dreaded Ohgodwhat. You don't want to run into any of those, and you especially don't want to run into both at the same time. On the other hand, glitches can also be Sburb's way of saying cheat like there's no tomorrow. In some cases, if you don't cheat there won't _be_ a tomorrow. Some people claim that cheating just makes the game want to kill you even more, but come on. It's a _game._ It's not sentient and plotting to murder you horribly; the horror-murder just happens on its own.

So on that note, cheating. It works, and it can save lives if you do it right. Buuuuuut this thing is about sequence-breaking, not life-saving, so if you want to dance the dance of a perfect session go find another article to read. We're here to have fun, after all, and what fun is worrying about life and death and mostly the latter?

And you know what makes cheating easy? Glitches! The best glitches let you get ahead and stay there, and in this chapter we'll be discussing some of the best ways to exploit them. The other ways can come in later chapters, so for now let's settle the one that has existed since time immemorial: _clipping errors._

\--------------------

**Clipping 101**

Clipping errors happen when something intends to hit something and goes through it instead, or when something needs to go somewhere and hits flat nothing. The latter is a pain in the posterior, but the former is Fun! There are many kinds of clipping errors such as Ghost Consorts (Consorts lacking hitboxes entirely) and patches of land you can sink in, but here we'll just be dealing with the kind that lets you sequence-break. Too bad for you.

Sburb places a high priority on doing things at the right time in the right order. It's annoyingly linear in that regard. To keep this functioning, the places you can't go yet are blocked off. Dungeon doors are the most obvious of these, but there could also be things like a landslide restricting access to a village or a high-level guardian mob keeping everyone out of a pass (note: Sburb takes high-level mobs _seriously._ Holy shit don't mess with those.) If you have or can trigger a clipping error in the right place, you can fly right on by all of these.

Sound simple? Not so much.

\--------------------

**Finding Natural Errors**

These happen more often than you realize, but most of them are useless. So you don't have to open a window in your house to leave through it. So what? Or oh nooooo your hand isn't exactly even with the wall when you touch it how horrible!!!1!! These little clipping errors happen all the time in this game, and most people either never notice or stop paying attention after a while. The trick is finding the big, useful ones.

What you need to find natural clipping errors is either a Space or a Seer player. Fortunately, Space players happen in every session. Or at least, every session that has a chance of success. Sucks to be you if you don't have one. Have your error detection player tag along with you and tell them to speak up if something doesn't match up with the visuals. Better yet, have them make you a portable hitbox detector by alchemizing an item that removes visual illusions.

When you find a clipping error you want to exploit, dive right in. Natural errors are a lot more stable than manufactured ones, so there's no need to make sure they aren't a one-way street.

Note: You can screw up some quests by going to places in the wrong order. Since only minor quests are set in stone like that (Denizen ones are very malleable), it's not too much of a big deal. Some have some pretty nice loot that it would suck to miss out on, though.

\--------------------

**Manufacturing Clipping Errors**

Here's your educational fact of the day: The game is vulnerable to tampering when loading something. If you time things right, you can trick Sburb into thinking it's loaded a hitbox when it actually hasn't yet. Shhh, it's a secret! There are as many ways to do this as there are players, but most follow the same format. That format is this:

1\. Make Sburb reload an area  
2\. Interrupt this

Simple as can be! Very Large Explosions work wonders for both, but you have to be careful to time them right or the second condition won't happen. If you have a clever Seer, you can take advantage of preordained versions of step 1 and save you some work. Say it's predicted that your Denizen will carve a new canyon into your land in order to block off a trade route or something like that. While you go to trigger the Denizen's actions by talking to that big ugly monster, have an accomplice interfere with the canyon creation. Say, with a Very Large Explosion. Or a pile of TNT. Or a nuke, if you have any to spare. Or, in one notable case, by crashing a meteor into the zone.

Another way to make Sburb reload an area is to get everyone as far away as the target zone as possible and then have your Space player teleport everyone there at once, while everyone is casting something. In a few cases the game freaks out and assumes something Important is changing things there. I prefer explosives, though.

Guaranteed events to take advantage of:  
1\. Domicile-creation in a Land  
2\. Battlefield changes upon entry  
3\. Awakening the Beast (not advised to mess with this one)  
4\. Lighting the Forge  
5\. Growing the Godfrog  
6\. Creation of the Ultimate Reward's entry-gate-thingy, you know, that thing that appears after the Black King is horribly murdered

WARNING: Sometimes created errors can be _weird!_ As in, fall through the ground and eventually splat against bedrock weird! Always have your Space player check things before jumping through a created error! Also, sometimes you get invisible walls instead. That's not all that dangerous though.

\--------------------

**Bedrock**

This is separate because I haven't been able to confirm it, but _supposedly_ you can use clipping errors to get through bedrock and access the Underworld early. If anyone has any stories about this, tell me, because all my attempts ended in failure. Can't believe I irradiated part of my Land for nothing. Sburb is apparently really big on keeping bedrock impenetrable.

WARNING: This is probably against Angelic law. I don't know for sure, but they have laws about so many weird things that I wouldn't be surprised if it were true. Oh, and try not to let them get out through the way you came in. That would be a Bad Thing.


	3. Glitch Abuse: Event Flag Issues

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes quest conditions aren't as specific as they say they are.

**Introduction to Sburbian Event Flags**

As everyone who plays it knows, each Sburb playthrough is unique. Lands and quests are generated the moment someone loads their client disc, and due to Weird Time Shit this means that pre-game stuff is generated as well. Yes, this means that the world your dreamself has been frolicking in ever since you woke up early was actually generated _after_ you started frolicking. It's a weird game, what can I say?

The bad thing about this is that there are no specific event flags that are always glitchy every time. In fact, there are no specific event flags that are always there in the first place. If your session is doomed to crash and burn in a fiery explosion where a burning tire miraculously rolls away mostly intact, it just won't load the flags related to anything resembling success. Some people claim they can hack the game and predict doomed sessions in this way. I suspect doing that makes them doomed in the first place; Sburb really hates hackers for some reason.

The good thing is that the generation process is as glitchy as heck. This means that event flags can easily be triggered early or end up being triggered from the beginning. I even heard of a case where a player's Denizen rolled over and died before she even entered the game. As in, when she was frolicking on Prospit pre-game they were celebrating the liberation of her Land, yet the Consorts were still acting like the Denizen was there because the code still had them programed to their basic pre-game attitude.

This makes identifying and falsifying event flag conditions a very prominent way to sequence-break.

\--------------------

**Dungeon-Crawling**

Let's start with the easiest one first. Dungeons are a great way to gain abilities, boonwhatevers, and, if you're lucky, useful equipment. They also have very easily-identifiable event flags in the form of their doors, which are nice enough to tell you what conditions need to be met before you can enter them. These conditions are based on things such as Consort reputation, other events flagged, and fetch quest items.

Now, in basic dungeons (quest dungeons are a whole 'nother story) the underlings and loot levels are either based on your current level or the entry conditions. There's no way to know which one is which until you see your first (it's decided during Land generation), but all of the dungeons in a given Land are based the same way. To find out, pick a dungeon that you can estimate to be a few levels higher than you are currently, break in, and see how hard the mobs fight. If they're too hard, hightail it out of there and sulk. If they're just right for your level, break into a wide grin because you can now break into high level dungeons without being in mortal danger. Worse case scenario in that case, your loot is leveled to you instead of being as high as the dungeons.

To actually break into the dungeon, you can do the following:  


1\. For Consort reputation conditions, captchalogue a bunch of Consorts and wander through your Land triggering spawn points. Defeat the high- and mid-level enemies but leave the imps alone. Use whatever skills you have to keep them aggro's until you have a train of imps following you. Lead them to the dungeon door, uncaptchalogue your Consorts, and trounce all those low-level underlings in front of your followers. They should get suitably excited and impressed with your combat prowess. Whenever they act this way happens, a region centered on those Consorts gain a temporary boost in reputation. It's supposed to be used for asking favors from village elders, but it works just as well for dungeon opening. Quickly run through the door before the excitement and thus temporary reputation dims.  


2\. Other event flags (such as Denizen slaying, certain sidequests, and meetings with Royalty) are a little harder to falsify. It's usually easiest to just have a Seer or Sage look for dungeons that have the flag for those flags falsely triggered, but if you're desperate you can try to fake it. The trick is to get the rest of the game acting like you completed it. Spread false rumors among your Consorts about defeating the Denizen/ meeting the White Queen/ delivering the MacGuffin to the village of Such-And-Such until they start believing it. Occasionally this will trigger the flag needed to open the door, but like most glitches this is unreliable.  


3\. Entry items. This is the absolutely easiest thing ever. Say you have to find some skulls and stick them in the holes in the door. Instead, find some wood and carve them into the right shape. It doesn't even have to be all that accurate. Just do it.

WARNING: _Only_ include imps in your train! Higher level mobs get _really_ nasty to deal with when there are a bunch of imps soaking up your attacks for them! Plus, some of them may try to target your Consorts and you do not want that.

\--------------------

**Sidequests**

First thing to know 'bout questlines? The game only cares about the order you do the quests themselves in. Whether you actually kill the Big Scary Monster before rescuing the Damsel In Distress is superfluous, as long as said Damsel is rescued and the Monster killed before you go report back to the questgiver. This makes it really easy to mess with the event flags. For instance, if you have a Big Scary Monster guarding some loot at the end of a dungeon triggered to collapse on it's defeat? Usually the collapse is actually triggered by the retrieval of the loot, so that the dungeon doesn't fall on your head before you retrieve whatever Legendary Piece of Shit you've been charged with retrieving.

This means you don't have to actually fight the Big Scary Monster. Do the sneaky and creep by it, grab the loot, and run. The collapsing dungeon should kill the mob for you, saving you time and pain. Better yet, captchalogue the chest o' loot instead of opening it. Because of the pile of glitchiness that is Sburb, this frequently won't trigger the collapse the dungeon flag. Make your way out as leisurely as you like and open it once you're safe.

Some other abuseable flag conditions are:  


1\. When items switch hands. If you have a long and boring questline about bringing the Grand Whatever to Whoever, you can identify the end receiver and just hand it to him/her directly. If you're lucky, you'll immediately gain the fame and loot for all of the inbetween quests without having to do them. If not, just talk to the quest givers a few times to make sure all the flags are triggered.

2\. The time something is supposed to happen. You can't just change the settings on your computer, sadly enough. It would be neat and pretty broken if that were so, but nope. What is useable is that in some cases little things such as AM/PM and the day/night cycle aren't fixed on your Land. For the former it just means you can wait 12 hours instead of 24 but the latter can be manipulated easy enough. Just keep falling asleep and waking up repeatedly until the right number of cycles has passed.

3\. Land reputation. Take the strategy previously discussed in the Dungeon-Crawling and apply it to whatever you want to trigger early. Easy-peasy. If you need to temporarily _lower_ your reputation, get trounced by the imps instead and have a buddy rescue you.

4\. What items you have. For the Hat Competition, for example, it's a lot easier to make a fake Ultimate Hat than go searching the wilds for the sacred temple you need the relic from in order to trade for the stupid thing. Just make sure you show off whatever fakes you make to the Consorts so the game will be properly tricked.

WARNING: Do _not_ mess with Prospitian mail quests! PM can spot a fake letter like nobody's business, and she does not like that shit! Get out your good shoes and pick up the letters yourself. Yes, even if the sender is Tenacious Loremaster. You can make it up the Thousand Stairs, you big baby.

\--------------------

**The Main Questline**

Major events are easier to predict, but harder to actually mess around with. Their scripts are as stable as anything gets in Sburb, and some of them have things in place specifically to make sure nothing messes around with them. You aren't going to be making the Genesis Frog without Lighting the Forge first, though you can prep for it. And just you try skipping the search for the Shiniest Frog you need to make the godfrog in the first place. Not a good idea unless you want to screw over so much crap.

However, it is perfectly possible to skip major events that only matter for a short amount of time. And technically speaking, you _can_ win just by doing the Space frog hunt, grinding your echeladder and grist store to oblivion, murdering your Denizen instead of questing for it, and building your Spire up to Skaia in order to face the Black King. It's just very likely to screw you over in so many ways that your chances of survival drop to near-zero. Some speedrunners like to do this, apparently.

So on that note, here are the major events you can skip or cut short via mucking with event flags without guaranteeing a screw-over. Note that if you're not careful, it may happen anyway. Also note that only confirmed-by-me-or-someone-I-trust ones are on here. Others may well exist, but I just haven't seen them yet.

 **First Contact:** The first time you meet your Consorts, they will have a big event (the type depends on the personality of the little guys) followed by a village elder lecturing you on the state of the land. It is big and boring and gets old after your third session or so. This one is simple: don't meet your Consorts until you've desecrated some tombs and raided some ancient temples for land reputation. The village elder won't get flagged for the lecture if your land rep rises above baseline, because _clearly_ you've all met before!

 **The Slaying of the Beast:** First, be an absolute pacifist. Your Denizen should automatically skip past all the Maturity quests you'd otherwise need and make you kill it. Next, shout yay! Naturally, only useable by the pacifistic. A more commonly useable thing is to trick the game into thinking you've completed your Maturity quests. I say more commonly but the only proven technique is only useable in a session that has a Heart player. Too bad for all of the other sessions out there! Get them to mess with your shiny heart thing and in about 15% of the sessions at least one Denizen will fall for it. In 85% of the sessions the big nasty will just laugh and give you an extra-hard quest because you are a cheating cheater that cheats. Still worth a shot, though, in my opinion.

 **Hunting Frogs:** This takes forever, so just skip it and go straight to your Denizen for help with the Shiniest Frog. Usually they'll just laugh in your face but try it anyway. Strike a devil's deal if you have to, because seriously a land reputation hit is nothing compared to the tedium of frog hunting. Auuuuuuugh. The event flag in this case is one you need to _avoid_ tripping. Do _not_ ectobiolobreed the shiny frog until everyone is nearly done with their crap because making the Genesis Frog early can trigger an early Reckoning. Make sure you have all the normal frogs ready for the machine and then use your extra time to help someone else with their stuff. If you need help ectobiolobreeding, chances are there's someone in your session that used to be a Space player. Ask them for help.

 **Aspect Quests:** These are rare, so I'll explain them first. This is less of a singular event than a phenomenon that is practically guaranteed to happen to you at some point if you survive enough sessions. Sometimes Sburb decides someone has been having too much fun and throws a special Aspect quest their way. These are tedious and dangerous, and the only payoff is that your Whisperings will be happy for a while. The only point to doing them is that if you don't, your abilities will take a drastic cut in effectiveness and may even stop working entirely. Getting called to one is nowhere near subtle, either. Your Whisperings kind of just _grab_ you and tell you "you're going here and you're going there now." No arguing allowed.

There is exactly one confirmed way to falsely trigger the end quest flag for these, and that is to talk it out with your Whisperings. Convince them that you've already caused the end result of the quest and that doing it again will just delay whatever you can think of that is important to your Aspect. I haven't the slightest idea how often this should work, since the method of "talking" varies from Aspect to Aspect and I only ever had the opportunity to repeat an Aspect quest once. My first was as a Maid of Rain, so when I was a Dame of Rain I did some cryptic bullshit to initiate a conversation and basically told the Voices that since I already did it in a previous session it would be far too logical for it to happen again. There was some circular logic involved.

 **The Battlefield:** The eventual goal is to get the Reckoning started via all sorts of events that like to claim the goal is to win the war. This one is really easy because the hardest part of sequence-breaking is not starting the Reckoning too early. Just loosen up on the delaying things a bit and you can skip right past all that crap.

 **The Black King:** Yes, you can trigger the Black King's death flag early. I've had it happen by accident before. No, you do not want to actually do this. If you do, the end credits will trigger but the Black King will not actually stop attacking you. You will be absolutely helpless while the credits run and there is a good chance someone or a bunch of people will end up dead. I am not telling you how it happened because of this and because the _second_ time I had this happen was when I told the Bard of Stars how it happened and he decided to confirm it.

WARNING: Even the ones that won't necessarily screw you over are risky because there is always the potential that they will mess up _other_ event flags. Use your own discretion. Skipping First Contact is perfectly safe though.


End file.
